Mastering Data Migration for Law Firm Software

Welcome to Accountants Law Pod, where accounting professionals and law firms converge. Hosted by Lynda Artesani, Sarah Prevost, and Stephen Libhart.

Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. And Sarah, welcome back to back home in Oregon. I know, right?

I was on your coastline. I was really enjoying New York, although odd to be there when a massive occurrence happened for the UHC CEO. That was not very far from where I was too, by the way.

I looked at the footage on TV and I thought he was inside the building at first. And the fact that they can't find this person, maybe by when this lands they'll have found that person. But the fact that they couldn't find him is incredible.

Yeah, the whole thing, it's incredible. It's an interesting conversation that's being had. For everyone. But yeah, I think for me, just personally, physically being there and unaware— I've heard, you know, you hear all the sirens and it's just so beautiful. We had a great time.

But you were there during all this Christmas stuff and all the big—

oh, tree lighting.

Yeah, all the lights and— yeah, yeah, that's really cool. Rockefeller. Yeah, the tree lighting. Did you go to the tree lighting?

We didn't. Well, I think I was— I tell you, so there was this beautiful, lovely Michelin-star dinner planned in a private room for all of us. Ooh, incredible. They always do Michelin for you guys.

You guys.

It's always— It was very nice. And I'm sitting next to a gentleman who is with Gusto, and he's a New Yorker. He's been a fairly long-time New Yorker. And a bunch of us were chatting like, oh, we're thinking about doing this tree lighting because it starts at 10 o'clock at night, which is crazy to me, but that's when it starts. And his face said it all.

As soon as he—

like, the way his face was, I looked at him and I said, that decision is over. We're not doing this. And everyone started— Is it cold? Yeah.

Well, I've only seen the tree once. Yeah, I saw the tree once. It was a year we were going to, um, QuickBooks event in Toronto.

Okay.

And, or Toronto, as you— how you supposed to say it? And we met. And so Matthew met me in New York, and we both flew into New York, and we said, let's just do this tree thing. And it's so funny because you've seen on TV your whole entire life because it's a big deal, right? The big Rockefeller Center tree. And we were in all these crowds of people and you had to kind of push your way through. And it was a little lackluster 'cause I expected it to be bigger. Kind of like the White House. When you see the White House for the first time, you're like, oh, that's it? Or the Mona Lisa. Oh, that's it? So it was kind of like that. It was like, oh wow, we just pushed our way. 'Cause you literally had to push your way through. Although it was cool to see the rink, the ice rink and the decorations. But you got to actually see like the windows and stuff. I didn't get to do any of that. That's pretty cool.

Yeah, I saw the windows. The ice rink is very small. The tree was really large actually. Was it? Yeah, it came from New— Tall.

Massachusetts, right? Came from Massachusetts, I think, that tree.

And F.A.O. Schwartz has now moved on the corner, which is more festive. And then we were in Bryant Park where our dinner was, or where our first one of our meals was near Bryant Park. So we got to experience that and the little shops around there. And—

Wow. And the mamas went shopping.

They did. They did. They had a great time. And they did— they wore themselves out. So they kind of really took it easy and just kind of worked a little bit on the They look like they're having fun from pictures I saw.

Yeah.

So how am I going to segue this into mastering data migration for law firms?

We can pause now. But it was interesting. Well, partly was there is 4GPAC for counsel, and it talks about migration. You know, we talk about even payroll data migration.

Well, payroll migration is a— and that's a software migration— is definitely a— it's its own unique beast. Now is a great time to migrate because you can end a year with one software and do another one. You know, as when this is being recorded in December.

Yeah.

Move to another one very seamlessly and easily. Although you should have an overlap of the old one and then the new one, which I think people are like, oh, I'm all done, I don't have to pay for it anymore. But you do have to kind of pay into January to get the W-2s and all the other processes done and the final taxes done. And you don't wanna cut it off before then. But it's definitely a different, it's a good time of the year to do that actually.

Exactly. I mean, well, you and I, we've done it before where we've done them mid-year, which for certain things can be done. For certain things, it is nice to do it at the clean, at a quarter.

A quarter. Yeah, do it at a quarter. A quarter year in. A week. Yeah, in the middle of a pay period. Don't do that.

We've had that problem. But I think the biggest thing, what's near and dear to our heart, is this is how we started our our venture together.

Our business started.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, and I can't believe 5 years, it just, it's flying by. Flying by.

Yeah.

And it's, we've had some monumental moments this year in our company and it's been very—

For sure.

Pretty remarkable.

When you think about it, we started out, you got a job doing a data migration for a very large firm. I don't think we really knew what we were getting our hands into. Many weekends Sarah and I worked by ourselves, many weekends pulling this data in because it was an estate planning firm and it had a lot of open trust accounts. And we built out all of those records, backbuilt them all so that they were all intact in the software that we moved to Personas.

It was actually, as hard as it was, it was probably the best. First off, it aligned. We knew our work ethic jointly. We knew how we liked to work together. We knew how we worked separately. We were so— we're still, we're still supportive of each other and how we work.

I do remember going through it going, how did we figure this out? And pulling up the paperwork that we had to use from it, which was very antiquated, and going through.

Yeah.

Account by account by account. And I'm doing the Zs and you're doing the As and we'll meet somewhere in the middle. It was so They had brought some of the stuff in, our team had brought some of the stuff in, but we were really tasked with building it all back out because it wouldn't have been done if we didn't do it that way.

Well, we learned a lot of things too.

We learned a lot on that job.

And the software that was coming out of, which is not uncommon to a lot of firms, is PCLOS. So it was an antiquated software that really, it was, in its purchase, it's not to dog on them, they were just, it was an acquired sale. And in that acquired sale, they were changing a lot of their tactics. And it felt to some clients being held hostage were the words that clients were using with us. Not only that, it just needed a rebalancing. There was no clear report that really gave them the identity.

Yes, the reports were really ugly. Remember, you'd pull it out in Excel, fine, but then you couldn't really read it. And if you pulled it out in a PDF, it had a weird formatting issue.

We had to figure out the guide. I mean— The headers were big. I fondly referred to certain reports. I won't refer to them here, but I fondly gave them nicknames. Identify things, and it was, it was good. We did find, um, some unfortunate moments that were just a misrecording, but it was, you know, you'd think in these all-in-one systems there is a ton of bumpers, and we found, you and I figured out that there wasn't. There was a, a rather costly mistake that was made that we got, we're able to help fix.

Yeah. Um, but yeah, so there were some interesting That's something that we find all the time with data migration is we tend to be able to figure out where the trust went awry when we're digging through, especially if it's in something so old. We've worked in some really old software like Abacus. There's a name for you for a software.

What's the other one? What's the other one that was really challenging? Oh gosh.

Juris. Juris. Which you, you're good at going into the old software and pulling it up and going, Looking at the data and figuring out, I mean, some of it looks to me like the old OneWrite Plus.

Yeah.

QuickBooks was like QuickBooks, but the old OneWrite Plus system, it's very like, very DOS looking. It's very, I don't know, some of them are really bad and you're really good at figuring out how to go around. What was another one too that I was always amazed how you could find the reports? Well, Practice Panther, that's another one that never, the layout of the UI is not that great, but there was another one there that you had that Oh my gosh. It's an online one too, but it's the way it's laid out and you had to buy every single— So if you wanted a report, you had to buy it. And I was like, wow. And that was a big software, but it was for bigger firms. I can't remember the name of it, but—

Was it the Adherent one?

It was the— Yes, Adherent Online.

Yeah.

And that's an ugly software. That's a real ugly software.

It was really locked down. Yes, exactly.

And you had to go deep, like 6 or 7 layers to find anything. And then when we did find out, we go like, how can we not have like a simple report like that? Oh, that's an extra module you had to buy. And it was not cheap. None of these other software are cheap.

No.

So, you know, when somebody moves to like Clio or LeanLaw, they're like amazed at, first of all, we always have to tell them as we are teaching them how to not overthink it because, you know, you had to click. Remember we did that test where we had one person, she clicked like 11 or 12 times. I think that's in my book. Click 11 or 12 times to do a task that like took 3 clicks once you moved over just to, to process the trust. And I think that, but people get themselves set in their ways with their old software. So I think to master data migration, you really need to understand what the end product's gonna look like, what you're working towards. And I think we had that vision all along in the very first project. And then you do learn as you go what you can take out, what you can't. It come out as a CSV. If the data can come out clean in a CSV, you're on your way to kind of using export tools to get the data out. But I think if you're used to— if you don't have any clue about that kind of work, you're better off finding somebody who does. It's not for the faint of heart.

Well, in our experience, when we're talking with firm owners, we have to establish the expectations a little bit differently because I feel that there's this misguided thought process of, oh, you're just going to take the data from here and plunk it over here. And it will look the same. And so to me, that, that is understandably a natural thought process, but it's also— we got to go deeper. If you have open accounts receivable, if you have old trust accounts that really just need to be fine-tuned, a little cleanup, right? Not— If you, if you operate slightly differently, what is the workflow process that we need to— we need to make sure that more people are involved. This isn't just kind of a top-down decision sometimes. It's also— there's a need for it. There's a need because we want the data to come out and we need it to move to a, maybe a more of a platform that can grow with you.

That's the other thing too, because moving data is expensive. It's expensive to pay us to do the work because it's a lot of work. And then it's also expensive because you have to train your team and people have to learn. And then the person helping us get the data off, you know, one software to the other, that's a big job for them. So it's not a cheap thing to move and you don't want to move yourself into something that's only gonna be good for a couple of years and you're gonna outgrow it. And with any type of software, this means even like if you're moving from, I don't know if you're in some kind of a, if you're in a PC Law, you're in a software that's handling the QuickBooks side of it as well. 'Cause it's an all-in-one and now you gotta move data into QuickBooks, which is another piece of it. So you're moving the data into QuickBooks and say you're putting somebody into Clio.

Mm-hmm.

You've got those two segments. It's a big data migration to do that. And Are you going to just, you know, this time of the year, are you just going to go, okay, I'm done with 2024, moving into 2025, I'm just going to pull in the opening balances and leave the old open if I need to go back, but use the new going forward. That's always an option, but it's not usually a good one because like you just mentioned about the AR.

Yeah.

If the AR is not created inside the new software, which you're bringing in the Kasey stuff, you're going to have a problem when you have to clear that out. So you're going to not be able to pull those metrics out of that system until you've processed that old stuff.

Yeah.

And then you're also going to be dealing with, because if it's— LeanLaw says it beautifully. If you, if you change an invoice inside of or create the invoice inside of QuickBooks and not do the process through LeanLaw, LeanLaw is not going to see it. It sees the amount, but it's not going to see it or process it in the same way as if it was created in LeanLaw and then pushed into QuickBooks. Same for Clio. It doesn't handle it the same way. So you need to make sure any existing open AR, which we know law firms always have a lot of, is gonna be expressly, the workflow's gonna be expressly handled in its specific way. Because if you don't, it's not the same until you've managed to go past that hurdle of getting past all that open stuff.

And I think— Another thing is you're saying AR and I'm thinking also the advanced client costs. Any sort of—

Advanced client cost is another big issue.

So I think of them in pillars. I think of, you know, we've got like our website used to say, and it's on the book, it's modernize your law firm. That's what we looked to do for a lot of firms. And when I think of these modernization moments, it's a need to get onto a cloud-based system that's easier to use. But what is the tools that you need inside of it? Like you said, the summary of the AR might be needed. It might be a separate workflow. The advanced client cost is another big —big area. What if the money's in transit for some of these things over the year end? What if you have accounts payable that really is impacting the way that you want to look at your firm in a certain way? There's all of these questions. And then to your point, like you're saying, Lynda, we had to look at it through this lens that the firm owner needs.

Mm-hmm.

What are the skill sets within the firm and who needs the additional support? And who's going to be our friend through the migration? Because we need access to data.

Well, that's the other thing too. When you're looking at this data, we have seen it.

Yeah.

We use mostly Clio and LeanLaw, so I'm going to call both of them out.

Yeah.

Okay, the attorney talks to, they just make this decision. They don't include us in the whole conversation. We find out about it after the fact. And they've now done this data migration where they've taken the data out of XYZ software and moved it into Clio. Moved into Clio, we get the, green light, it's all been moved over. If nobody checks that, it, it could possibly not be there in the way, A, you wanted it to be presented, and B, some of it might not have come over. Just because they said it moved over doesn't mean it necessarily has. And we've seen on both software where they said, oh, beautiful migration, it's all there. Open, open your WIP, your work in process. All the, all the WIP is there. And if somebody doesn't check the numbers and pull the numbers down the old software and, and validate it with the new, which is our job.

Yeah.

But then what happens to us sometimes is the attorney will make the shift in the end of the year and we don't find out about until the first of the year. And they're like, oh, by the way, I'm not using this software anymore. I've now moved on to this software. It's like, when did this happen?

And we're not—

That's not a cheat date.

That's not good.

No, we need to know about it. We need to know about the change and when it happens for sure.

Well, it goes deeper too, because we look at the templates of how you want your invoices set up. We look at the way that your firm needs to operate. We look at all of these components that now we want to make sure, does your client level match what you're looking at? Do the clients even line up to the right client? Does the matter line up to the right?

Well, that's the other thing. And one of the things, in fact, I just worked, actually worked on the new book that's going to be coming out for bookkeepers. And One of the things I mentioned, because I'm actually working on the lien law chapter, I mentioned that when you're trying to validate the numbers back and forth, so you can go into lien law, pull up a list of all the balances in trust, not what's up in QuickBooks. If the numbers don't align, it could be that somebody archived something in lien law, archived a matter in lien law, and it happens. You just go for a clip and archive. I'm all done with that client. Had a balance, but we just archived it. And now QuickBooks still shows the balance because if you try to archive something in QuickBooks that has a balance, It depends, I think, how it sees the data. Sometimes it'll tell you you can't archive it or delete it. In that case, sometimes it'll delete it and throw it all in the opening balance equity account. Well, you still find it, it'll still be pushed there, but it's something that you need to know how to handle. And these are the things. And then knowing how to use the other pieces of the software, knowing how to use the tools that get the data here to here. If that's not your forte, get somebody that can do it for you because it's not worth I don't think it's worth— if you're a bookkeeper that just works with lawyers and you're not into doing this kind of stuff, it sometimes can trip you up. I think you're better off hiring somebody to do that work and just be honest with your client. Say, look, I don't do this, but I have a colleague that does this. Just had that happen the other day where I've got something that came by my way. I'm like, this is not what I do, but I will refer you to somebody that can help you because it's— you're better off doing that for your own reputation. And hopefully you find somebody that knows how to do it. Well, Okay.

And, you know, we've— I've seen this before in our training sessions where you're inheriting a migration because a firm didn't— somebody left a job in-house and it never got— it was never right to begin with. And/or the information, like Lynda and I've seen this where we're training on the first half and assisting you with a workflow, and then we realize it has something to do with this migration. We've had to redo migrations. Somebody did one 4 times. We were the 5th, I think, or something.

That was awful. I mean, the money was a lot of— Ru at this migration, and it was just so bad.

And it was unfortunate too, Lynda, if you remember, because it was still stuck between 2 data software points. It was a legacy firm, and we really did— we got it to a good place. But it took, I think, over 18, 19 months just to trust side.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Well, and I, you know, it just hit me, Lynda, too, the best part. Oh, I'm going to change softwares and I'm going to change banks.

Oh, because that goes hand in hand.

That just goes hand in hand.

I'll fix the trust.

It doesn't balance. I'll just get a new bank account. That'll fix the trust not being balanced. You just move all the money over, but you still don't know what was in that money. You see that a lot. I understand a clean start is what the mindset is. It's a clean start. I'm moving the money over. But they don't think of it from our perspective as we got to get it over here to here and how we do that because we still have to, like you say, follow the money. We have to see what it is here and here. It doesn't fix the problem. It does not fix it.

It does not fix it. And it's so much truth to what you're saying is do hire somebody with this experience. We've seen people come at this a couple of different ways. But if you are not bridging the the two sides, meaning the data side and the accounting side, and understand a firm's workflow, you— this is a lose-lose situation. You might find a data person, but ultimately you're, as a firm owner or as someone on your team, is going to be spending a heck of a lot of time trying to revalidate this data. Um, I know that for us, we— because we did the roll-up-your-sleeves kind of mentality and really did it, and I think it was as it was meant to be. We were supposed to do it in this order.

It helped us because we now understood so much more, right? And you had a bigger knowledge. I think you had a better knowledge of like a lot of the tools that we ended up using. I think we ended up using— did we use SaaS Ant? And we used, oh, what's the name of that software that we— I think we just stopped paying for, but it was one that we used that we actually copied the invoices over. Remember?

Yeah, there was a few different things.

AutoEntry. AutoEntry. We moved the— we did the the duplicate. So we actually brought the software because we had to make the whole QuickBooks file.

And, um, and then we had to, we had to recreate the data because the data wouldn't come out. That would not come out properly. Would not come out properly. So to this day, still doesn't come out.

There's still nobody who can create something that's going to help move that out of PC Law. There's a couple of firms that do, do some of that migration, but they don't do it all in its entirety. They don't do it the way we were doing it. No, no.

They were bewildered and couldn't believe our process. And I remember it just hit me, a light bulb moment. I was sitting there and I said, oh, Lynda, what if we did this, this, and this? And she's like, oh my God, that's kind of brilliant. So we had to like reconstruct the data a certain way. But outside of that, in totality, um, having done a lot of migrations from, for multiple softwares, um, it really does, it does, uh, to be honestly in a good space, I think it's a good moment to have someone walk you through. There's sales and then there's an integration team on every software.

Right. If you, if you're talking to the salesperson, you're not going to get the same response because they'll tell you everything they can possibly tell you to sell you. And it might not necessarily be true. And I think you just really have to find somebody that knows what they're doing because to master data migration, you need to know what you're moving, And how you're moving it and how's the data gonna look at the other side. So if you know what you want to see in this side, the QuickBooks side plus whatever the other software is, and it's coming out of this software or this software and this software, then you really need to make sure that they align. And in order to the— for them to align, you need to really know how you're getting it over and then understand the ramifications of moving it over. So if you have a SaaS and you're able to push things out,— and we move it into QuickBooks. So however, if you use bank feeds or however you get the data over into QuickBooks, that piece of the data, you gotta know what it looks like for the sales side when you're talking about the customer side.

Yeah.

With Clio, there's a lot more working parts 'cause it's a practice management tool. So it's got a lot of pieces in there that you're gonna have to discuss with the client, what you're moving over and what can be moved over and work with your rep from Clio to know if, I mean, we've had some good experiences and some not so great experiences with, people that have helped move the data over. And it's the same with LeanLaw.

It's the same. All software—

Even some other software that we've had to move off of where we're told one thing and then we find out, oh, that's not built yet. And now we have to do it in a different way, which can be a big lift, right? So know what you're getting yourself into. That was fun.

What was that? Like Profit Solver or some other software. The biggest thing too, I think for us is I can get it in, how can I get it out? Is the question people need to be asking.

Well, with PC Law for sure, because it had all those ugly headers, you couldn't pull it out decently. And there's a lot of other softwares. And if they're not coming from any software and you're just getting them out of a spreadsheet, that should be a relatively easy lift. Although I don't know if you're able to put them in.

It's a learning curve, though. That's the other side of it, is sure, it's an easy lift in some aspects, but it is a learning curve of adjustment. If you are that firm owner that feels most comfortable keeping that spreadsheet, by all means, until you feel the comfort of understanding the workflow. But yeah, Lynda and I have seen, um, I mean, there's software on here that we haven't even listed. Uh, we've had multiple discussions, uh, with other software companies that have come to us to present and ask us opinions of, of information, and ultimately it's the product, the, the product results, the things that you want the product to, to do for you, and what is it that you may or may not be doing now. So if you have, you know, a team of people and you've got workflow documents over here, case information here, calendaring over here, and—

Yeah.

And all of these components, reevaluate that process. And don't— like you said, Lynda, just Don't do a light switch moment if you can. We do this all the time with ourselves. We test internally, her and I, products before we present it. Do we just have to test it? We have to.

Join the Law Lab. We can help you do it too. If you want to know how to move the data, we can certainly answer some questions if you get in there, or we can pull it up on an open forum week. That's a way to have someone help you if you really want to learn this stuff. It's important to learn it, though, because you On the other side of doing all this work is the happiness moment of like the client's happy, the work is flowing through, they're working in the product, they can't believe they worked for so long in this other product that was— Yeah. Working in their firm. And they're just flabbergasted by all that it can do and the data they can extract from it that they've never had the ability to see or read before. And that's the big movement of moving data into something more modern.

Even a smaller firm, I just remembered the one I think we're thinking of was the Thomson Reuters product that moved to a MyCase product that we then in turn moved off. And that whole workflow and the individual on the team really wanted to be ultimately in Clio at the end of the day. And they had previously once been in it, but it was just this, 'cause we've done Needles before as well. We've seen all of these pieces. So that's what I'm saying. It hits me as we're talking. I'm like, oh, yeah, I know what you're—

I can't remember the name of that one. That kind of falls in the jurist and the abacus needles. Sounds horrible, doesn't it? But, yes. So if you're using something like that, yeah, you're in a— I think when they see that they can have it where they have it at their fingertips, that it's not so stuck to their computer, the fact that they can add their time where they're in court because it's on their phone on an app. There's just so much there that they'll be able to do.

You can send notes, documents, all kinds of stuff.

Everything. If you're in a practice management tool like Clio. Yeah, there's a lot there. And I think that the ability to add other products, if you're, if you're moving off of something that's desktop related into the online products, which you should have been in 12 years ago, but you're moving into it today, you're gonna be so enamored by the other automations that'll come with it because now you have the ability to add Dext, and now you have the ability to add LiveFlow, and you've got Keeper and all these softwares that we use that now help you get really pristine data, which will then give you great metrics, which will then let you grow in a smart way through the future. And I think that—

And we can, we can speak to the growth side for you. We can answer, or we can, you know, right size. If you're fine where you're at, are you most efficient in what you're doing? Um, that's another thing to look at is there are people out there now that are saying, do I have to grow to grow? No, you don't. You can be where you are and we can just ensure, like, are you being most efficient with the software tools that you have in front of you? So that's another question of data migration is coming into it and understanding, like, what do you have? What are you utilizing? So yeah, we've— I think it's something that's near and dear to our heart because it's our start.

Yeah, it is. It's something we really enjoy doing. We enjoy taking somebody off of one software to another because of that. Happiness moment. It's a project. If you're gonna be doing this with your clients and you're considering doing this with your clients, give them a reasonable date that you think you can get the work done. You gotta draw the line in the sand when they have to turn, move from software A to software B. You can't have them lingering in the old one and still doing it in the new. They can't be in two. You can't dance on two dance floors. Mm-hmm. So you need to have that laid out in the, in the contract. And it should all be contingent on getting the data from them, which should have a— Well, You're— That's— About that. They don't— they're not excited. They don't always give you everything you need because they just think, oh, I hired somebody to do this and I don't have to bother with it anymore. But there's a lot of data that you need and documents that you need. You need to validate everything. So it's really important to get that. You need that good point person that has the ability to do all that for you.

Well, we've experienced this ourselves too, so we know from experience what it means to be on first base all the time as a homeowner. And who needs to put the data together, who has the information. We went through this very similar experience where we revamped a particular software app that we are utilizing so that it's a little bit more intuitive for our team and worked in our space. I felt for the team because it was a lot of work on our side in different components and pieces, and it has Lynda's thought process, my thought process, and we get that. That we can honor that. We don't want to make someone feel less than, especially if you're in a partnership, but everyone's a part of the process. We just want to make sure we get the right person that's able to assist with the deadlines as much as possible. And we understand we're working firms. All of us are working firms. We're servicing clients. You're servicing your clients. So we come at this—

That's the other thing, Sarah. You've got to make sure that you have that line in the sand and it's very clear because these firms live and die by that billing date. Of the 5th, the 11th, or whatever. And if you don't have that data in or ready to be billing out, you gotta have it ready because, or if you can't, they have to have the understanding that you're gonna need a cash, you're gonna have a little bit cash flow.

Yeah.

While we get this data in. So be prepared for it. Make sure they have a really clear and complete understanding of what is gonna happen during the data migration.

Absolutely. I mean, To me, in the end, it goes back to what we said at the beginning, which is the goals, the idea. And ultimately, you're making the switch because of a need. There's an inherent need, right? Like, I don't know, Lynda, I mean, we often hear it come at the front end for some, and others it's like, well, my friend down the street said this is better.

I was in court and my buddy said— oh, what did your buddy say? What's your buddy's practice area? Is it the same as yours? Oh no, my buddy's doing corporate law and I'm over here doing family law. Does it matter?

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Matters.

I love it. Mm-hmm. You asked. Mm-hmm. That's Lynda's response. It does matter.

I always feel bad when we burst people's bubbles sometimes because they think, you know, they hear something from this new software is going to be da-da-da. And we have the people we call serial software changers. So, you know, they've changed constantly. That's another thing you might run into too. So be aware that if you're going through a data migration and you see, well, what is this? This. It says that you were paying such and such software in 2023, and now it's '24. You're in this one. Good to know, because if the software is broken and it's broken and the trust is broken back through that, you have to have access to those other pieces to be able to figure it out for them.

You're reminding me because we had one who went through some really good software and ended up in a Microsoft product.

Oh.

Thinking it was going to do what it thought because They moved to the Microsoft base and it didn't. And the reality sunk in about 6, 8 months later in a conversation with me very randomly when I was basically revalidating and asking a lot of questions of why I saw trust movement happen. It wasn't in a bad way. It was just I wasn't understanding what the data was coming out of this product and the way that I saw it in the bank. Mm-hmm. And the way it was getting recorded, and there was a slight discrepancy. We had to re-change someone's workflow. Then we had to go back through, and there was absolutely no real report that we could furnish. It had to be individual matters of that we had to view, and that really— I mean, you want to talk about costs, that was costs. That was not a cheap date.

Yeah. No.

So if you're gonna make the change, to your point, what I— you brought this up, you really need to consult and make sure that you're not just springing it on somebody.

Yeah, you really do. And you really should analyze it, look at the cost, and decide and determine if you're making the right— because you don't wanna make the wrong decision. You wanna make sure it's something that you can grow into for sure. And make sure it's a software that you have vetted and that you've talked to other people who use it. It's not something that's here today and gone tomorrow either. I mean, you want something that's been around for a while that you have no good people are behind because we've seen that happen too, where the person stops making the software and then you're stuck. You have to move. You don't have a choice. So that's another factor you might want to consider when you're picking something, especially if it's something new.

Lynda, it's hard right now for people in general because so many merger acquisitions are happening in tech.

You think you're in a great software and somebody buys it out and it's some company you don't really want to work with.

Yeah. And then it changes the whole interaction you have.

Changes the software because sometimes the software dies after it gets purchased by somebody and they don't do anything to it. The innovation stops.

The innovation stops.

You don't want to be in something that doesn't have innovation. Like, you want to be in something that has already considered AI as part of their, their business model, even if it hasn't really been implemented yet. Know that they're looking into it and they're starting to develop something because, you know, that's the future. And if you don't at least have that light bulb higher, it starting to be lit in the background, you don't wanna be in something that's not implementing that at some point. It's just too important at this stage. We know how fast things change and if they're not even considering some sort of AI.

Yeah.

In some way. I mean, I love what Clio's doing. Can't wait for the price to come down. I love that whole—

The price should change. Yeah.

But I mean that one's, but there's a lot of money behind Clio. So you know, you're solidly safe into that software because you're putting your money into something that's very well developed. And then they've already— if you go to their conference, you can see where they're going in the future. You want to be in something like that as opposed to something like— I'm going to just say something that we have in Florida that's been created by an attorney years ago, has been sold, and it used to be used here. Initials are TB. And it just is very rudimentary. I don't know. I wouldn't put— I wouldn't hang my hat on that. Yeah, it's just not gonna be a software that's gonna either be around very long. Somebody's gonna buy it. I know somebody will buy that someday, but I don't know what will happen to it after that. And I don't think it's— it doesn't have a lot of features and it doesn't do much of anything other than the trust. So—

Well, the other thing too, what you just said, I was thinking about this as you were talking earlier. What about the— we've heard this before from clients that are thinking about— they went to, say, Leap and they wanna move back to a software. Because they were promised a lot of—

Yeah, it's on the roadmap, right? On the roadmap.

There you go.

It never happens. But then you, like, we were, we had a nice conversation with the lady that is working in Clio Duo and what they're doing with that. It's, I think that stuff is fascinating. I haven't been convinced that it's doing a lot of great things yet. And that one's so brand new, I don't even know anything about it. But I think that you're gonna start to see that stuff that's just gonna speed up processes. And it's going to make us be able to process data faster. That's what you want to be in. You want to be able to have that at your fingertips because if you don't, somebody that you compete against does. Your competitor does. So you really make sure you put yourself in a place that you're in—

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

That's the firms that are going to survive. It's not going to be the guy down the street with the ledgers, right? It's going to be the green paper. It's going to be somebody that's proactive and is using those tools.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and also, what are the efficiencies for your firm as well? Because if you have a dedicated person just really trying to manage software, yeah, that, that's probably not the best thing either.

If you're, and if you're a growing firm, you're going to be bringing new people in. Newer people want software. They don't want to be working in something antiquated. So—

Yeah, look at this generation that's coming through right now.

You think they're going to want to work in PC law?

Nope. The graduating class right now for some of these colleges and some of these trade, uh, schools that are coming through. I mean, as it is now, I mean, what they predict with AI and the way universities are going to have to work and the way that the cost of education is going to be is it's going to drastically shift. Yeah. And you're going to get specialized, um, in a different way. So yeah. Well, this is obviously a conversation topic for us, one that we love, um, and obviously we've been working in this for a while and I mean, we're both passionate about it. We enjoy it. So it's fun. And our team does. It's pretty fun.

Yes, they do. They like seeing it too. So yeah, it's fun to watch our team kind of grasp into it and validate the data now that we used to do. So that's fun.

Definitely. Well, thanks for this topic. This was great.

Yeah. Good to hear.

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Awesome. Well, thanks, Lynda. This is great. Yes. And we miss Steve.

We do. I know he's— hopefully he's recovering from illness, as I was down and out for the entire week of Thanksgiving.

And he has his toes in the sand.

And his toes in the sand in Hawaii. So mwah to you, Steph. You were missed for sure.

We miss you.

Yeah. Bye, everybody. Bye.